Very recently, WooCommerce announced the availability of its new WooCommerce 4.0 platform which is a modern Javascript-driven commerce experience. This latest release has been developed since the first month of 2020, however, a lot of improvements have been made on the developed things since 2018. WooCommerce 4.0 is a major release and this means that this version is not fully backwards compatible with existing sites running on various WooCommerce 3.x versions. Let’s take a look at the new WooCommerce 4.0.
What’s New in WooCommerce 4.0!
The New WooCommerce Admin
With WooCommerce 4.0, we are glad to see the new version of the WooCommerce Admin roll out. The new WooCommerce Admin is the first step towards a more modern JavaScript-driven experience of WooCommerce core.
The WooCommerce Admin provides much better reporting capabilities to its users as compared to the previous generations of the WooCommerce Admin. It allows for filtering, comparisons and the complete overview of how the store is performing in terms of sales, revenues, inventory management, adds capabilities for better customer management and analytics, etc.
Also, with the new version, it is now very easy to export data from these reports in a CSV format to enable the smooth interpretation between various apps/systems.
The new WooCommerce Admin offers the following enhancements:
New dashboard
With the new dashboard, users will be able to get a quick overview of the important sales data at a glance. If they so wish, they can dig deep into the details of such data with a powerful, customizable analytics dashboard. Users can configure it to meet the specific needs of a store or a store owner, receive personalized notifications and study metrics that matter the most.
New and improved reports
With the enhanced filterable and extendable reports, users can now take full charge of their organization and business process. The WooCommerce Admin now provides reports on sales, revenue, popular/highest-grossing products, categories, taxes, and more. Also, the easy export of these data facilitates the smooth integration of WooCommerce with other applications.
New Customer View
With the new version of WooCommerce, users will now be able to understand their customers better using the robust Customers tab. Users can now segment and filter customers and their details based on useful variables, track all sales history, easily export and download customer lists, etc.
New store management tools
Together with the WooCommerce admin, the new Activity panel is also being released with improved order management workflow and consistency between the desktop and mobile experience to all the customers.
Users can now access critical functions from any WooCommerce screen for an efficient store management workflow. This will help users to fulfill orders, manage stock and inventory, moderate reviews, etc. all from the API-driven Activity Panel.
Action Scheduler 3.1
One of the underlying technologies that enabled the WooCommerce Admin is the Action Scheduler. This is the background service that is already used in the WooCommerce core. The Action Scheduler 3.1 that is included in WooCommerce 4.0 is a new, more performant version of the Action Scheduler that was there. This time, the Action Scheduler utilizes the custom tables to provide a brilliant experience even to stores with large volumes of orders and posts in the database.
Additional Updates
In addition to the new WooCommerce admin and Action Scheduler, following are the enhancements made in WooCommerce 4.0:
- Enhancement to the Order edit screen
- Latest fixes of WooCommerce Blocks package
- Updates related to Brexit and VAT
- Improvements to email handling
- Optimizations for saving variations and Cash on delivery payment gateway
Beyond these enhancements, the release also contains some tweaks, new hooks, and fixes – all of which you can find out about in the readme.
Get started with your WooCommerce B2B eCommerce store and gain a competitive edge in the market!
